'His reverence was quite right when he said she would rob you!' Véronique exclaimed. 'If I were you I would send for the police.'
Lazare, too, began to speak about sending her to prison, provoked as he was by the demeanour of the girl, who perked herself up like a young viper whose tail had been trodden upon. He felt inclined to smack her.
'Hand back the money that was given to you!' he cried. 'Where is it?'
The child had already raised the coin to her lips in order to swallow it, when Pauline set her free, saying:
'Well, you may keep it this time, but you can tell them at home that it is the last they will get. In future I shall come myself to see what you are in need of. Now, be off with you!'
They could hear the girl's naked feet splashing through the puddles, and then all became silent. Véronique pushed the bench aside and stooped down to sponge away the pools of water that had trickled from the children's rags. Her kitchen was in a fine state, she grumbled; it reeked of all that filth to such a degree that she would have to keep all the windows and doors open. Pauline, who seemed very grave, gathered up her money and drugs without saying a word, while Lazare, with an air of disgust and ennui, went out to wash his hands at the yard tap.
It was great grief to Pauline to see that her cousin took but little interest in her young friends from the village. Though he was willing to help her on the Saturday afternoons, it was only out of mere complaisance; his heart was not in the work. Whereas neither poverty nor vice repelled her, their hideousness depressed and annoyed Lazare. She could remain cheerful and tranquil in her love for others, whereas he could not cease to think of himself without finding fresh reasons for gloomy broodings. Little by little, those disorderly, ill-behaved children, in whom all the sins of grown-up men and women were already fermenting, began to cause him real suffering. The sight of them proved like an additional blight to his existence, and when he left them he felt hopeless, weary, full of hatred and disgust of the human species. The hours that were spent in good works only hardened him, made him deny the utility of almsgiving and jeer at charity. He protested that it would be far more sensible to crush that nest of pernicious vermin under foot than to help the young ones to grow up. Pauline listened to this, surprised by his violence, and pained to find how different were their views.
That Saturday, when they were alone again, the young man revealed all his suffering by a single remark.
'I feel as though I had just come out of a sewer,' said he. Then he added: 'How can you care for such horrible monsters?'
'I care for them for their own good and not for mine,' the girl replied. 'You yourself would pick up a mangy dog in the road.'